It had been a mild winter…
Up until now-ish.
A couple of weeks ago there was a big storm, lots of people had been wanting snow, and they got it.
Sort of.
My experience of it was many, too many, hours of shoveling interspersed with falling, hauling, yelling, you get the picture.
The last straw was lying on the ground with a sled load of wood as my neighbor drove carefully around me and kept on going. This in a place where, if I had not been able to get up would have been less heart breaking and more life threatening.
Meanwhile, in the chicken house, the girls were unanimous in their request that I make it stop.
Even on the nice warm days of upper 20’s to low 30’s they tentatively stuck a beak out the door, gave me a look and went back in. Dried worms worked, but not for long.
Nobody wants any salad greens either.
“What is this trash you are feeding us? Why do you keep giving us cabbage, we hate cabbage.”
I apologize to them every day, and every day they forgive me and go on, but I don’t think they really believe that none of this is anything I can do anything about.
We are expecting wind chills tonight of possibly -40 and FB has people talking about it as though it were Ragnarok. There are some gods with whom I would cheerfully dispense, but maybe not whomever is in charge of chickens.
One woman is bringing them in to her house.
That will not happen here unless the power goes out.
Another says chickens are tough, and since that is Rebecca Rule and her chicken wrangler daughter Adi, I will go with that as my outer limit.
They have a flat ceramic heater, and heated water, more shavings than reasonable, and treats, so as long as the wind we are promised doesn’t kill the lights, I imagine we will all survive.
“Everything is always working out for me” my sister says, and it seems to work for her.
I will tell the girls before lights out.
